their chaplain of being under a ’Covenant of works,’ whereas their doctrine was one should live under a ’Covenant of grace.’  This is one of the great reasons why they were banished.  It was the very life of the colony that they should have conformity, and all of them as one man could scarcely withstand the Indians.  Therefore this religious doctrine was working rebellion and sedition, and endangering the very existence of the state."[17]

Mistress Hutchinson was given a church trial, and after long days of discussion was banished.  Her sentence as recorded stands as follows:  “Mrs. Hutchinson, the wife of Mr. William Hutchinson, being convented for traducing the ministers and their ministry in the country, she declared voluntarily her revelation, and that she should be delivered, and the court ruined with her posterity, and thereupon was banished."[18] The facts prove that she must have been a woman of shrewdness, force, personality, intelligence, and endowed with the ability to lead.  At her trial she was certainly the equal of the ministers in her sharp and puzzling replies.  The theological discussion was exciting and many were the fine-spun, hair-splitting doctrines brought forward on either side; but to-day the mere reading of them is a weariness to the flesh.

Anne Hutchinson’s efforts, according to some viewpoints, may have been a failure, but they revealed in unmistakable manner the emotional starvation of Puritan womanhood.  Women, saddened by their hardships, depressed by their religion, denied an open love for beauty, with none of the usual food for imagination or the common outlets for emotions, such as the modern woman has in her magazines, books, theatre and social functions, flocked with eagerness to hear this feminine radical.  They seemed to realize that their souls were starving for something—­they may not have known exactly what.  At first they may have gone to the assemblies simply because such an unusual occurrence offered at least a change or a diversion; but a very little listening seems to have convinced them that this woman understood the female heart far better than did John Cotton or any other male pastor of the settlements.  Moreover, the theory of “inner light” or the “covenant of grace” undoubtedly appealed as something novel and refreshing after the prolonged soul fast under the harshness and intolerance of the Calvinistic creed.  The women told their women friends of the new theories, and wives and mothers talked of the matter to husbands and fathers until gradually a great number of men became interested.  The churches of Massachusetts Bay Colony were in imminent danger of losing their grasp upon the people and the government.  It is evident that in the home at least the Puritan woman was not entirely the silent, meek creature she was supposed to be; her opinions were not only heard by husband and father but heeded with considerable respect.